Laying Down the Paw (36 page)

“Can you get it for us, please?”

She left the door open, returning shortly with a handful of phone bits. The tiny SIM card was shattered. It would be impossible to get any information from it.

“Should've known,” the detective said, sighing. Though it was likely hopeless, she held out a plastic evidence bag and Jenna dropped the pieces inside.

“If you hear from Dub,” I told Jenna as we turned to go, “try to find out where he is and let us know, okay? If he's innocent, we can help him.”

And if he wasn't, we could take one more killer off the streets.

 

FIFTY-SIX

IDITAROD

Brigit

It was snowing!

While dogs didn't like water much in its liquid form, turn it into frozen flakes and they're all over it. While Zoe the cat watched from the kitchen window, Brigit ran back and forth all evening in the yard, leaving paw prints in the snow. She'd even rolled around on her back and made a dog angel.

Seth had brought Blast over, too, and while the dogs frolicked, their meal tickets built a snow dog. Frankie helped them. It was only the size of a Chihuahua, but that was the best they could do given the limited supply of the white stuff.

When the humans finally forced the dogs to come inside, Frankie set off for work. The others curled up in front of the fireplace, where three logs were burning. The dogs lay side by side on the rug Megan had bought to cover the wood floor. Zoe slinked up and joined them, taking a preferred spot closer to the fire.
Cats. So arrogant.
The humans snuggled on the couch with mugs of hot chocolate laced with something that smelled like peppermint and made Megan giggle a lot. Brigit was glad to hear her partner giggle. It had been a while.

 

FIFTY-SEVEN

ICE, ICE BABY

Dub

Dub wore three pairs of socks and had even put his jeans and T-shirt on under his sweats. They reeked of mildew, but what choice did he have? Still he shivered uncontrollably. He tried the key in the ignition again, even though he knew it was a waste of time. Either the van had an engine problem or the battery had frozen. Either way, he couldn't get the motor started to run the heater.

His bones ached from the cold and he could barely feel his fingers and toes. His skin was turning blue. All he had to do was shave his head, learn how to play drums, and he could join the Blue Man Group. No face paint needed.

He grabbed his last remaining pair of clean underwear and slid them over his head, wearing them like a hat. He slid socks over his hands like mittens and hunkered down in his sleeping bag, curling up in a ball on top of the fridge in the cargo bay.

The world was too quiet. It was weird, and kind of scary, too. The roads were too slick to drive on, so there was no traffic noise from Interstate 30. There was only the sound of the sleet accumulating on the van and Dub's jagged breathing, which left puffs of steam hovering inside the van.

“Fuck, it's cold!”

He slid farther down in the sleeping bag, pulling the end closed over his head. He might suffocate, but that would probably be better than freezing to death. He felt a strong urge to cry, but he was afraid the tears would freeze on his cheeks and give him frostbite.

His breathing slowed, and slowed, and slowed some more, until finally the world turned black.

*   *   *

Dub woke early the next morning to an eerie gray glow. He peeked out of the sleeping bag to see the windows of the van covered in a sheet of ice so thick he couldn't see through it. With the iced-over windows and the fridge taking up so much space in the van, he felt claustrophobic.

He checked his phone. Still nothing from Jenna. He sent her another quick text.
Miss you. Are you okay?

He stared at the phone for a full minute, but no reply came.

He slid out of the sleeping bag and crawled to the driver's seat. He reached over, pulled up the manual lock, and turned the handle to open the door.

It didn't budge.

He pushed on the door. Still nothing.

He rocked back and forth in the seat. Maybe the motion would make the ice fall off the van.

Nope.

Nothing.

This time when he tried to open the door, he put his whole body into it, slamming his shoulder against the door. It was useless. The entire van was coated in a thick sheet of ice.

Dub was trapped inside his own little snow globe of horror.

He threw his head back and laughed. “Fuck
me
!”

He was trapped in ice, but his drinking water supply had dwindled to nothing. It was just as well. He needed the jug for other purposes now.

When he was done, he slid back into his sleeping bag. He thought about things as he lay there. About his mother and her sick, warped relationship with Andro. About Jenna, and how much he cared about her. He hoped she wasn't feeling ashamed about what they'd done, and he prayed she wasn't pregnant. He wondered why she hadn't texted him back. He wanted to see her, but how could he let Jenna see what he'd become? She'd
believed
in him. How could he tell her that he was homeless? That he was broke? That he'd looted a store? He had told her about the burglaries his father had made him go on, the drug buys, but the liquor store? That was all on Dub.

He lay there for an hour or so, sometimes sleeping, sometimes daydreaming of Jenna, his room back at Wes and Trent's place, a fire to warm his toes, when he began to hear cracking and dripping sounds.

The world behind the ice had become brighter.

North Texas was thawing out.

Thank God.

As he stared through the ice, watching it melt, watching the world get lighter and lighter, he made an important decision. He was going to turn himself in. What's the worst they could do to him? He was still a juvenile. They couldn't keep him in jail past the time he turned eighteen, right? Even if they could, prison couldn't be any worse than living like this.

Maybe he could somehow prove that he hadn't been the one to shoot those people in Park Hill. He would tell the police about how Andro had taken his hoodie from him the night before, how Dub had been sleeping in his van the night of the shootings, about hearing the police dog sniffing around the doors. He still had the orange sticker the cop had put on his windshield. The date was written on it in black ink. That was evidence, right?

Relief flooded through him. He feared what might happen, but at least now he had a plan. He slid the orange sticker into his wallet, rolled up his sleeping bag, and waited for the ice to release him.

*   *   *

It was midmorning by the time the ice had thawed enough for Dub to force the door open on the van. He climbed out, taking his sleeping bag with him, and walked to the nearest bus station. He planned to turn himself in, but first he had to go to his mother's place and tell her a final good-bye. She couldn't be a part of Dub's life anymore.

Dub had to do this. He needed … what did they call it? Oh, yeah.
Closure.

Dub didn't worry about running into Andro at the apartment. He knew the drill. Any time Andro smacked Dub's mother around, he'd disappear for a few weeks, give Katrina time to get over the physical pain and some of the emotional pain. The emotional pain never fully went away. But with time it dulled enough that she was willing to set it aside, especially if Andro showed up with meth.

The bus arrived and Dub climbed on, raising his face to the warm air blowing from the heater. He sat down, putting the sleeping bag in the empty seat next to him.

Two transfers and an hour later, he walked up to the door of his mother's apartment, stuck his key in the lock, and jiggled it until the lock released.
Click.

He pushed the door open. “Mom? You home?”

“She's here,” hissed Andro as he pulled Dub down into a headlock again.
“And so am I.”

 

FIFTY-EIGHT

SLIPPERY SLOPES

Megan

The streets had iced over last night, but as Texas weather was wont to do, it changed drastically this morning. The sun rose warm and bright, putting a quick end to the ice in the places it touched. The shady areas took longer, but between the sunshine and the sand trucks that were out and about, most of the major roads were safely passable.
Good.
I wasn't in the mood to be dealing with traffic accidents.

I found myself wondering where Wade had spent last night. Had he found an open church to hole up in? A homeless shelter? A twenty-four-hour diner? I also found myself wondering where the facts ended and the fiction began with Wade Chandler Mayhew. Was he a violent juvenile delinquent as his record and the evidence seemed to reflect and as his mother portrayed him? Or had her false testimony led to her son receiving harsher sentences than he deserved?

I could only hope that someday the boy would be found and the facts would be ferreted out. Call me an idealist, but I still hoped for truth and justice.

Brigit and I set out on patrol. As we cruised through the neighborhoods, we spotted the slushy remnants of yesterday evening's snowmen. Scarves and carrot noses and charcoal eyes lay in yards, the snowmen they once graced having committed snowicide.
You're not alone, Frosty.

My first call of the day involved a frozen pipe that had burst in a shopping center parking lot, creating a potential traffic hazard. I put out a semicircle of orange cones and directed cars around the area until a city works crew came and took over.

My second call involved documenting property damage on a corner lot in the Colonial Country Club neighborhood. Someone had lost control of their car when driving last night and taken out a brick mailbox and a decorative fountain, leaving muddy tire ruts in the yard. The culprit failed to own up to his or her blunder, however, leaving the homeowner furious and facing a bill of a couple of thousand dollars to replace the damaged property. I took down notes for the report I'd complete later.

I was starting to ponder lunch options when dispatch came on the radio, asking for an officer to respond to a call in the neighborhood just north of R. L. Paschal High School. A 9-1-1 call had come in, but the caller had hung up immediately after the dispatcher answered.

I grabbed my mic. “Officer Luz and Brigit responding.”

The call could have been a false alarm. Some people had the 9-1-1 emergency number programmed on speed dial and inadvertently hit the number on occasion. Other times, people thought they were having an emergency, but the situation resolved itself before their call was answered. I remember hearing of such a call last Easter, when a father had challenged his sons to see who could stuff the most marshmallow Peeps in their mouth. The father won with thirteen, but found himself suddenly unable to breathe with a baker's dozen of fluffy yellow chicks lodged in his trachea. He managed to upchuck the chicks before the dispatcher got to the call.

Of course there was always the possibility that today's call had been purposely ended, such as in cases of domestic violence where the perpetrator might wrestle a phone from his victim's hands.

At any rate, any time someone called 9-1-1 and hung up, the operator attempted to contact the caller. In this case, when the operator returned the call, there was no answer.

I pulled my cruiser to a stop in front of the house and took a look. The house was a single-story white brick model with cheery, bright red shutters and a wooden rocking chair on the porch. A line of red-berried holly bushes flanked the front of the house. A large oak tree sat in the front yard, its gnarled roots reaching out from its base for a few feet before disappearing into the earth.

Nothing immediately looked amiss. Though the front curtains were all pulled closed, that wasn't necessarily unusual, especially given the frigid temperatures of last night. Why leave the windows uncovered and let all that cold in?

My eyes made a quick survey of the surrounding area. There wasn't much to see. Nobody was out and about at this time of day in winter. They were either at work or huddled inside watching soap operas. A sand-colored Suburban sat across the street a few houses down. On this side of the street, the only vehicle in sight was a blue Subaru Impreza parked near the corner.

I climbed out of the patrol car and let Brigit out of her enclosure in the back, wrapping her leash several times around my hand to keep her close. The two of us walked up the winding brick pathway to the door. Brigit had her head raised, her nose twitching as it scented the air. Whatever she smelled excited her to no end. She launched into a prancing dance, her front legs coming off the ground like a saloon girl performing, her tail wagging so hard it whipped against the back of my legs.

Something had my partner agitated. But what?

Gasp!
My heart ping-ponged in my chest when a squirrel darted out from the bushes a few feet away. He ran up the oak tree and squatted on a branch, swishing his bushy tail in indignation as he chastised me and my partner with a call of
chik-chik-chik-chik-chik!
Heck, I was tempted to
chik-chik-chik
him right back. The damn rodent had scared the snot out of me.

As Brigit and I drew closer to the front door, my eyes spotted a small, hand-lettered sign in the front window that spelled out
MEEMAW'S DAY CARE
in primary colors.

Kids. Hmm.

Maybe one of them had been playing with the telephone and accidentally called 9-1-1. Or maybe one of the kids had gotten his tongue stuck to a frozen barbecue grill in the backyard. Or maybe Meemaw had suffered a coronary. Or maybe I should stop speculating and go to the front door and find out, huh?

Determined to do just that, I took a few steps forward before being yanked to a stop by my partner. Brigit had stopped in her tracks, her ears pricked. Her head made jerky movements to the left and right as she processed whatever auditory data I, as a mere
Homo sapiens
, could not detect. The only thing my ears detected was the
drip-drip-drip
of the icicles melting at the edge of the roof.